


Early November

by iwtv



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Drinking, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, a lovely little cabin in the woods, and makes stew, comfort with angst, in which Alive!Thomas is still possible, james chops firewood shirtless, post season/show finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 08:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9984485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwtv/pseuds/iwtv
Summary: Perhaps they would spend the rest of their days stumbling over the bridges of these New Reasons, trying to understand one another’s pain. Thomas had accepted the challenge gladly.





	

Savannah

It was nearly dark when he climbed the stairs to the porch of their cabin. The new wood barely creaked under his heavy boots. He had gotten used to the heavy footwear slowly. They were very different from the gentleman’s shoes he had always worn, but out here he’d discovered they were a necessity, like most things were.

He saw the glow from the hearth as he opened the door. A blast of heat greeted him. James had the fireplace all but roaring, enough to reach the doorway as Thomas forced it closed against a gust of cold wind. The winter cold had taken hold a few weeks ago. Here, like London, the winters could get quite chilly despite the southerly location, but unlike London the winter air here seemed crisper and cleaner, without the constant odor of a city all around. That took getting used to as well.

The house appeared empty despite the fire but there were the signs of life that had come to mean so much to him in the last few months- two heavy coats, one hung neatly on the back of a chair and another thrown over a second chair by the fire, a few books resting in the chairs; there was evidence of cooking. He walked up to the large pot and peered inside. A thick stew, with meat and potatoes _and_ carrots. Thomas grinned. Rabbit food, as James always called it, and tried to avoid eating it, but Thomas always reminded him that as a ex mariner he should know better than most the dangers of avoiding certain foods for long periods of time. 

The stew looked good, though it was quite thick. He saw a plate on the kitchen table with a few scraps remaining. Clearly the stew’s creator had intended to be elsewhere when Thomas returned from town. Thomas walked through the back of the cabin and to the bedroom, a mere few feet away from everything else. One thing he wasn’t sure he would ever get accustomed to was how small this place was. James had told him it was large for a cabin.

It was larger than the cells he’d known at Bethlam, but immensely small compared to his London home.

The bedroom was also empty. There was a single candle, freshly lit, burning on the single dresser across from the foot of the bed. Out here when night came, it was so pitch black that Thomas found himself practically unable to function without at least one candle lit in all three rooms.

He returned to the main room, sapphire eyes finding the door that led to what passed as their back property, and as he neared it he heard wood being split. It was far too late to be chopping kindling. Frowning, Thomas stepped outside and back into the cold. There, in the middle of their flat clearing of land, was James. He raised the axe high above his head and sent it careening down into the piece of wood perched on a tree stump. The wood split with a sharp echo, its twin pieces flying off if opposite directions, one of them landing in a small pile of like objects. Thomas saw a decanter nestled into the grass by James’s feet. He recognized it as the one James had brought with him from Nassau, full of port wine from Spain.

James’s eyes drifted up to his own. The moonlight revealed a layer of sweat coating his broad chest, flecked with orangish hair and freckles. His neck and face were flushed and his normally bright green eyes were slightly dull with drink. He nodded a greeting at Thomas, then picked up another piece of wood and settled it on the trunk, stumbling over other pieces. Thomas opened his mouth to speak but clamped it shut as James raised the decanter to his lips, steadied his feet, and took another drink from it.

Thomas’s chest grew tight. He sighed. There was a plethora of reasons for James to be getting drunk, he knew. Many of them were Old Reasons that Thomas and he jointly shared, and some of them were what Thomas--in his head--and come to call New Reasons, or those demons that plagued only James because he brought them with him from Nassau. Thomas had New Reasons as well. Those, of course, were the demons that had followed him from Bethlam and the Time After, before James had found him here.

Perhaps they would spend the rest of their days stumbling over the bridges of these New Reasons, trying to understand one another’s pain. Thomas had accepted the challenge gladly. James had too, but James currently had real things he was stumbling over and Thomas really did not want him to accidentally sever a finger or for any reason whatsoever.

“Will you please stop?” 

He raised his voice slightly but kept it calm. The axe cracked into another piece. James stumbled back a step, breathing hard. His breath came out in huffs, visible in the chill air for a few seconds. He let the long handle of the tool slide through his hand until it dangled loosely in his grip. He bent down and picked up the wine with his other hand and made his way back towards the house.

He walked by Thomas wordlessly and went inside. Thomas followed him, more grateful for the warmth this time than the first time he’d entered the cabin.

James let the axe rest alongside the fireplace. He picked up a rag and wiped it over his face, then his arms and chest, wiping away the sweat and bits of wood there.

“Can I ask what this is?” Thomas ventured. James stilled, back to him. He tossed the cloth carelessly to the floor. Thomas stepped in front of him, offering him a wooden cup. James dragged his eyes up to look at him and Thomas winced inwardly. He saw how hard James was trying to numb himself. James took the cup from him and poured.

“I merely would like to know the name of this particular pain,” Thomas said, pouring himself a cup as a sign of something resembling either appeasement or peace, he wasn’t sure which. They had gone through this before. The first time had been shortly after they had moved in here. Thomas had woken from a nightmare particularly vivid and had drank one too many cups of tea laced with brandy. James had sat down beside him and had very tenderly smoothed out his hair, saying something similar: _‘Can you tell me why?’_  
It was the way he looked at Thomas in those moments that had made Thomas comply with the question, the way his jade eyes seemed to touch him just as deeply as any physical contact ever had.

The second time had been about two months past. James hadn’t drank anything but he had been furious, rambling on about something having to do with news of several pirate hangings, people he had known and once fought alongside. Thomas had let him fume for a couple of hours, then brood, before approaching him. James had said their names--their given names--Joji, DeGroot, Dooley, and others. They were none of them ever friends, he had said, but he had known them for years and they had served him for years and it was ultimately his fault they had been hanged.

It was complicated.

Now, as James sat down heavily in a rocking chair, massaging his forehead and closing his eyes, Thomas sensed this was something else.

“It was around this time,” James said at last, “Early November, when it all happened.”

His voice was thick and scratched. He cleared it, eyes still closed as he spoke.

“When Peter Ashe told us they took you. When I held Miranda in my arms and told them both where I intended to go.”

He opened his eyes, pupils shrinking as they focused on Thomas.

“That was the day that started it all,” he said. “When I decided she and I would go to New Providence Island.”

He looked down into the contents of his cup but didn’t lift it. Thomas sat across from him in the chair to his writing desk. He swallowed and pursed his lips, taking a sip from the wine. He had never cared for port, having grown accustomed to the finer wines and liquors the great city of London had to offer, but like most things, he’d discovered, it was simply a matter of acquiring the taste for it.

Much like acquiring the taste of accepting shared guilt and suffering and learning how to manage it--in small doses and not large gulps. He did not need to press James to bare all here and now and James did not expect that of him, either. He left his chair and stood beside James, a hand on his shoulder.

“Did you know,” he began, knowing full well James did not, “That it was April 19th when I first kissed you?”

He kept his eyes fixed across the room and at the herbs hanging over the kitchen, taking another sip.

“It was actually a week later that I marked that to memory. That was also one of those moments that began the accumulation into something greater and beyond my control, an event I started but had no desire whatsoever to stop.”

He let the words hang in the air another moment before looking down. James was looking up at him. His eyes were blurry and moist, brows furrowed and suddenly everything in Thomas ached pleasantly. He pulled the cup of wine from James’s hand and sat it aside with his own. James stood up slowly, the rocking chair swinging gently. He held the sides of Thomas’s face in his hands. They were rough and warm and safe. Thomas opened his mouth to the kiss that was somehow as fierce as it was tender and needing. Tears blurred his eyes as James pressed hard into him, a tiny desperate sound escaping him as their tongues danced together, tasting of port wine and winter and all the Reasons that had joined them together a second time.

It was Thomas who broke away first, panting for air and collapsing his forehead onto James’s shoulder. James, who gripped the back of his neck and held onto him so that Thomas knew he never, ever meant to let go. Yet when Thomas looked up it was clearly James who still needed, who would always need, need, need, after ten years of needing and not having, and Thomas wasn’t least bit overwhelmed. He craved it, yearned for it, embraced it.

“Come on,” said softly, wiping away James’s tear-streaked cheek with a thumb. “Let’s go to bed.”


End file.
